The Intended Hunger Games – How Trump Denies Bread to the Poorest. A Distressing Investigative Report

The paralysis in Washington has further worsened the hunger crisis in America, which affects not only numbers but people. The shutdown has now lasted four weeks, and as of November 1, the suspension of food assistance threatens almost the entire breadth of American society that depends month after month on an electronic card because even with work, the money is not enough. According to government figures, around 42 to 44 million people use the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP. A system that functions like a debit card, at the supermarket, the dollar store, the farmers market, even online with retailers like Amazon. On average 187 dollars per person per month, too little to live on, too much to cut without consequences. That this very program is now being used as a bargaining chip in the power struggle marks a turning point: for the first time since its introduction, benefits are simply not to be paid out because the government is closed.

The Department of Agriculture announced it in a manner that, even in Washington’s heated language, feels like a slap in the face. On its own website stood a partisan accusation, followed by the sentence that the source had run dry, that there would be no benefits on November 1. That in the same breath it was claimed that the blockade served dubious culture-war goals of the other side shows how far the executive has drifted from the sober administration of a basic right: the right not to go hungry.

“Democrat senators have now voted twelve times against funding the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In short: the source has run dry. As of now, no benefits will be paid on November 1. We are approaching a turning point for the Democrats in the Senate. They can continue to insist on health care for illegal immigrants and gender mutilation procedures - or reopen the government so that mothers, babies, and the weakest among us can receive the urgently needed nutrition assistance.”

The banner was removed after a few hours, as it clearly violated the Hatch Act - the US law that obliges government agencies to remain politically neutral. Even more serious: the text deliberately spread disinformation by blaming the Democrats alone for the impending suspension of food benefits and using terms that originate from far-right campaigns. Even in Washington, where rhetoric is often sharp, this appearance was seen as a taboo breach. It shows how far the government is now willing to go - and that apparently nothing is too shameful anymore when it comes to justifying its own political agenda.

No one seriously disputes that the ministry has five to six billion dollars in emergency reserves that could bridge the gap. SNAP costs eight billion per month, so the buffer would not cover everything, but it would prevent refrigerators from emptying overnight, shopping carts from standing still, and children from going to school without breakfast. That is exactly what is now at stake in court.

An image that has now become part of everyday life in America: people waiting in long lines for their food assistance

A coalition of more than two dozen states, led by New York, California, and Massachusetts, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Boston on October 28. The argument is clear and harsh: the Food and Nutrition Act obliges the federal government to provide benefits for all eligible recipients. That the agency refuses to do so by citing the shutdown is avoidable, arbitrary, and unlawful. The case landed before federal judge Indira Talwani; she hears on October 30 the motions to compel the USDA to use the reserves. Excerpt from the 51-page complaint

The complaint, filed on October 28, 2025, in federal court in Boston, is titled “Commonwealth of Massachusetts et al. v. U.S. Department of Agriculture et al.” and unites an unusually broad alliance. Led by Andrea Joy Campbell (Massachusetts), Rob Bonta (California), and Letitia James (New York), more than two dozen states and the District of Columbia joined together to sue the federal government over the abrupt suspension of SNAP benefits. On 51 pages, the attorneys general of the participating states list their names, addresses, and representations - a legal signal of remarkable unity.

The contradiction is obvious: our research found that there are internal papers, precedents, there is a report from the Government Accountability Office dated June 25, 2020, showing that exactly these emergency funds can be used in comparable situations. Nevertheless, the agency now declared that the funds were not legally available.

The report documents that the Department of Agriculture in 2019 paid out SNAP funds prematurely without legal basis, that the GAO deemed it a violation of law - and that the ministry did not acknowledge responsibility. Thus the GAO report from 2020 is a central precedent.

At the same time, an earlier implementation plan was removed from the website, which explicitly mentioned the will of Congress to maintain SNAP during a shutdown. When states sue in such a situation, it is not out of principle but because they know that otherwise food distribution and emergency aid will exceed their capacities.

We are on the brink of a hunger crisis caused by the White House. 42 million Americans will not be able to put food on the table in three days if Republicans do not release the funds for SNAP. (The figures range from 42 million to 47.5 million as of October 30, 2025)

Pressure from below is growing. In Nevada, the government on October 29 released thirty million dollars for food banks, a patch that barely covers a third of the expected gap. In Texas, the grocery chain H-E-B is donating five million to the Feeding Texas network and another million to Meals on Wheels, hoping to cushion the hardest blow. The numbers there speak for themselves: 5.3 million Texans live in food insecurity, the share has risen within a year from 16.4 to 17.6 percent, and among the elderly the situation is even bleaker. Economists warn of a chain reaction: about twelve percent of all food purchases are directly based on SNAP payments. If this revenue in a state like Texas suddenly disappears, sales fall, shelves are stocked differently, working hours are cut, and jobs are ultimately lost. Those standing at the checkout feel the politics within days.

In Texas, the hunger crisis is meanwhile taking on a dimension that leaves even long-time helpers speechless. The state, proud of self-reliance and individual responsibility, now stands on the brink of a collapse of its supply networks. More than 5.3 million people are considered food insecure according to Feeding Texas, the rate of 17.6 percent higher than in any other state. That means almost one in five families does not know if they will have enough to eat next week. Especially affected are children and the elderly, many of them in rural counties where supermarkets have long closed and the next distribution centers are hours away.

The Texas retail giant H-E-B responded on October 24 with a donation of six million dollars - five million for the Feeding Texas network, another million for Meals on Wheels. It is a generous gesture, but it cannot stop the structural collapse. Because once SNAP payments cease, around 3.5 million Texans lose their most important income support for groceries. Experts warn that this will not only hit families but the economy itself: about twelve percent of all food purchases depend directly on the SNAP system. If that share disappears, sales drop, shelves remain empty, employees lose hours, and markets lose shifts.

“Once those funds are gone, it hits the checkouts first, then the shelves, and in the end the jobs,” said Gary Huddleston, right, from the Texas Retailers Association.

The crisis in Texas shows what national ignorance means in local reality. Between oil fields and megastores, between church kitchens and highways, a state is fighting the hunger of its people - and doing so with the mixture of pride and despair that so often accompanies this country. What is happening here is no fringe phenomenon but a warning sign: when even Texas, the heart of Republican economic logic, begins to crumble at its social base, the crisis is already larger than a budget issue.

Federal politics, however, stands still, or moves backward. On October 29, Democrats in the Senate tried to pass funding for SNAP and for WIC, the program for women, infants, and children, by unanimous consent. A minimal protection against hunger, limited to the duration of the shutdown. Republican senators blocked the step and argued that the entire continuing resolution passed by the House should be adopted instead. Ben Ray Luján, who introduced the measure, warned in the chamber with an urgency clear to anyone who has seen the faces at food distributions. John Thune countered sharply that the other side had voted thirteen times against funding attempts, and now must bear responsibility. It is a dispute sparked by procedural questions and decided in reality at refrigerators.

Lines stretching around the block at the food distribution in Hyattsville, Maryland. This action is part of the efforts by foodbankmetrodc to support families - including federal employees and contractors - during the shutdown. (October 28, 2025)

There are voices that remain deliberately hardened. Right-wing commentators openly call for abolishing EBT, saying most people can provide for themselves and the rest should go to churches and soup kitchens. A language of contempt that ignores the simple truth that most beneficiaries work, that this is about wages no longer covering rent, medicine, and food, that waves of layoffs are tearing through entire regions. On the other side stand politicians who articulate the moral principle that should long have been above every debate: food is life-giving and meant to be shared. Kentucky’s Governor Andy Beshear reminded of that with a reference that holds beyond church pews: from the loaves and fishes to the Last Supper. Whoever cuts off access to food violates a fundamental mandate of the state.

“This is a president who, in the middle of a shutdown, talks about a 20 billion dollar aid package for Argentina but provides no money to feed our own people.”

- Governor Andy Beshear on MSNBC

The president himself has used this moment to stage himself far from home. “Donald Trump is literally dancing in Asia while over 40 million people lose access to food. Disgusting,” wrote California Governor Gavin Newsom. He is not exaggerating. The images from Busan, Yokosuka, or on the runway may serve the grandiosity of a man who understands strength as a backdrop. But at home, government offices stand empty, flights are halted because air traffic control is understaffed, and even the Capitol cannot process staff pay: the House announced that wages would only resume when the government reopens. The Budget Committee had the CBO calculate what the standstill costs: seven to fourteen billion dollars in permanent losses, depending on duration. Relentlessly sober phrasing: working hours not worked do not return.

About one in eight Americans could lose their food assistance this week

While the executive shifts blame, municipalities, civil society groups, and companies take on a burden that should not rest on them. In South Carolina, Cuisine Rescue, Inc. in Mount Pleasant rescues surplus, perfectly edible food every day that would otherwise be thrown away. Supermarkets, restaurants, wholesalers, manufacturers - from all these sources flows a stream of fruit, vegetables, bread, refrigerated goods, sorted, checked, and distributed by volunteers. It is work that has double impact: less hunger, less waste. Anyone who has ever looked into a warehouse of this kind knows the absurdity of our throwaway society - and the dignity of those who haul boxes in cold and heat because they know that tonight a child needs a warm meal. But even these helpers have reached their limits, because cooling, transport, rent, and diesel cost money. Demand is exploding while the state systems that should make these tasks predictable are politically blocked.

The crisis has another, quieter front: data. In October, it became known that the government plans to discontinue the decades-old annual survey on food insecurity. The report for 2024 is to be the last one, published on October 22, 2025, as a closing stone instead of a beginning. Since the 1990s, the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has conducted an annual survey measuring how many people in the United States are affected by food insecurity. This data collection, independent of aid programs like SNAP, is considered a key basis for policy decisions and poverty analyses. Its possible suspension would mean that the U.S. would no longer have reliable official data on hunger within its own country. Thus the executive would deprive the nation of one of its most important metrics for recognizing, comparing, and managing hunger. At a moment when programs are faltering, winter is approaching, and energy prices are rising, that would be self-blinding. Experts call it by its name: whoever abolishes statistics no longer wants to see what is. And whoever no longer sees what is can more easily convince themselves that it does not exist.

All of this is not happening in abstract spaces but in kitchens like that of Vickie Southern in Nashville, who on October 29 made sandwiches for her children and her middle school cheerleading team - and saw on her phone the news that the benefits were suspended. It happens in community halls where pastors turn supper into food distribution for families because the food stamp did not load. It happens in rural counties where the trip to the next supermarket already costs a tank of gas, and in cities where dollar stores offer noodles but no fresh vegetables. Joel Berg of Hunger Free America described the dimension without pathos: the largest hunger catastrophe in the U.S. since the Great Depression is looming. That is not an image but a sober description when one considers the multiplier: 44 million people missing in supermarkets are not just 44 million empty baskets. They are billions of missing calories per month.

In one of the richest countries on earth, more than 40 million Americans are on the verge of losing their food assistance. Many people are contributing today, October 30, 2025, by donating food to FeedMoreInc. More than 14 million Americans are now considered acutely undernourished. In some states, food banks have had to close because government funds were cut.

People who use SNAP are now turned into symbols: the lazy, the freeloaders, those who “don’t try.” Whoever talks like that has not counted the hours at the checkout, the night shifts in warehouses, the overtime in caregiving. SNAP is wage replacement where the market fails. It is social infrastructure that must be reliable so households can organize their lives. Whoever cuts benefits in the week before the holidays will see lines double, private debt grow, pharmacy purchases skipped, and family tensions rise. Whoever points with moral superiority to churches and food banks misunderstands their logic: they are supplement, not substitute. North Carolina’s Attorney General Jeff Jackson said it with a clarity often lost in the noise: food pantries, churches, nonprofit organizations do great work, but they cannot suddenly cover the needs of hundreds of thousands of children.

For every meal distributed by a food bank, there are approximately nine meals provided through SNAP - but many food banks are bracing for sharply rising demand if millions of people lose benefits starting November 2025.

The legal battle in Boston is therefore more than a dispute over jurisdiction. It is an attempt to hold the last dam before politics privatizes hunger again and shifts it back into the realm of charity. The complaint by the states outlines soberly what is at stake: the suspension of benefits leads to food insecurity, hunger, malnutrition; children learn worse, are unfocused, tired, depressed, disruptive. The follow-up costs are ultimately borne by the same systems that are being weakened today: schools, hospitals, social services. The contradiction could hardly be greater: the Department of Agriculture claims it cannot use the reserves; the same state months earlier passed an omnibus bill cutting social programs to finance tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations. The GAO noted in 2019 that reserves can be used. Now the executive declares the opposite. This is not merely a matter of accounting but of credibility.

For many, it is barely comprehensible how a country with such economic power reaches a point where states must sue the federal government so that children do not go hungry. The answer does not lie in a natural disaster but in political will. Whoever uses SNAP as leverage deliberately unleashes fear. Whoever abolishes the annual measurement tool cuts the alarm. Whoever drags the moral imperative of food assistance into culture wars turns people into props. And yet there is resistance: governors who sue, legislators who try to secure at least the minimum, companies that donate, initiatives that save what others discard. It is a patchwork, and that is precisely the problem. A cornerstone of the American social system must not depend on the goodwill of individuals.

The shutdown has finally split the country into symbolic images of power and concrete emptiness in refrigerators. Airplanes in Newark remained grounded because air traffic control shifts could not be staffed. Congressional employees read emails that they would not be paid. Families read emails that the food card would not load. In California, the governor formulates sentences born of anger yet aimed only at one thing: to flip a switch so agencies do what they are meant to do. In the southern states, volunteers start cooling units so broccoli does not spoil. In Texas, a supermarket giant sets up tables and cooks 340,000 meals for the holidays. It is as if a country is simultaneously trying to put out a fire and turn off the water.

The decision on whether the state fulfills its duty now lies with a judge in Boston - and in the hands of politicians who must find the courage to put this dispute above everything else. SNAP is not a privilege. It is a minimum level of protection in one of the richest economies in the world. That this protection is suspended because leaders cannot agree on other issues is not only bad governance, it is a transgression. People will remember in a few years what this week smelled like: of empty shelves, of plastic containers at food distributions, of diesel in the delivery vans of initiatives rescuing refrigerator leftovers. And they will ask why the state looked away, even though it had the money - not to solve everything, but to prevent the worst.

While millions in the U.S. do not know how to pay for their next meal, Donald Trump is grappling with his very own drama: the completion of his ballroom. Marble floors instead of meals, crystal chandeliers instead of food stamps - America’s hunger crisis meets Trump’s construction crisis. And somewhere between golden curtains and cold buffets, the morality of a government seems to have been lost that never had any to begin with.

Perhaps that is the only honest conclusion of this October: the crisis was avoidable. There were reserves. There was precedent. There were laws that were anything but ambiguous. There were companies that helped because they could, and people who toiled because they had to. And there was a government that decided not to act. If Judge Talwani in Boston pulls the emergency brake, millions of people will gain time. If not, states will pay from their own coffers, food banks will extend hours, churches will open their basements, neighbors will cook for neighbors. But that would no